You come from Syria. From Afghanistan. From Pakistan. From Turkey. From Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia or Kosovo.
You are welcome.
That is not a pious wish. It is a stance. A conviction. And this article is addressed to all those who see it differently – not to provoke, but to show: those who blanket-reject foreigners are not just wrong. They are harming Germany.
The argument of fear – and why it does not hold up
"They are taking our jobs." "They do not want to integrate." "They do not fit in with us."
Everyone knows these sentences. They sound like common sense. They feel familiar. And they are still wrong.
The Federal Employment Agency is clear: Germany is missing hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. In care. In trades. In logistics. In medicine. Those who come and want to work fill a gap. They take nothing away.
The mirror we do not like
Germany holds one of the most powerful passports in the world. As Germans we travel to Thailand, Morocco, India, Mexico. We do not speak the language. We barely know the culture. And we are welcomed everywhere with friendliness.
Nobody asks whether we fit in. Nobody treats us as a threat.
We enjoy openness – and deny it to others. That is a contradiction we must speak out about.
What really lies behind rejection
Xenophobia rarely arises from real experiences. It arises from images. From headlines. From the feeling that the world is changing – and that someone must be to blame.
Foreigners are not to blame for rising rents. Not for overcrowded schools. Not for long waiting times at the doctor. These are structural problems – grown over decades through political decisions made by people who have always been here.
What Germany loses without openness
The economic miracle? Built together with guest workers from Italy, Spain and Turkey. Care in our nursing homes today? Sustained by people from all over the world. Our research? More international than ever.
To all who think differently
The person fleeing from Syria did not choose to be born into a war. The person coming from Afghanistan did not choose to grow up under the Taliban.
They chose to stand up. To leave. To start again.
That is not a problem. That is exactly the courage that we in Germany so like to claim for ourselves.
Freedom does not work in one direction. Let us be the country that deserves its passport.